Colonizing the Mind: the case of India 1820-1857

Themes

• Introduction: what is meant by colonizing the mind?

• Colonizing the mind and Humanitarianism• The missionary offensive• Constructing a History of India• Indian Customs, British Culture and the

Law

Introduction: what is meant by “colonizing the mind?”

• Getting control of what people think• Organizing knowledge• The superiority of our way of thinking• Wilberforce 1813: “Our religion is sublime,

pure, beneficent. Theirs is mean, liscentious and cruel.”

Colonizing the mind and humanitarianism

Orientalists and AnglicistsHumanitarians’ civilising missionGovernor Generals of India committed to this

from c. 1790s

Humanitarian Governor Generals

Lord Cornwallis1789-97

Humanitarian Governor Generals

Lord William Bentinck1828-35

Humanitarian . . . .

Lord Dalhousie1846-1857

Humanitarian . . . “I see bloody and degrading supersitionsgradually losing their power. I see moralityand the taste of Europe beginning to producea salutary effect on the hearts andunderstandings of our subjects”—ThomasMacaulay 1833

Missionary Offensive

Missionaries arrive, 1813Limited convertsBut deep opposition

Constructing a History of India

• Began after Plassey 1757• James Mill, History of India 1818

Indian Customs, British Culture and Law

• Macaulay Minute 1833

Indian Customs, etc.

Suttee

Indian Customs, etc

Thugee

Indian Customs etc.

• British law replaces Muslim and Hindu law from c. 1820

• Completed by 1864

Conclusion: the paradoxes of colonizing the mind

• Stimulated resistance• Stimulated expansion of traditional customs• Basis for Indian collaboration• Cultural justification for British rule, that

derived from Humanitarianism